Get on the Bus (1996)

3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

March Madness

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Spike Lee shot Get on the Bus in around three weeks for only $2.6 million, all of which was contributed by Black investors (like Danny Glover and Wesley Snipes), and on Super 16mm. It was released just one year after the Million Man March of October 16, 1995. Lee was not credited on the screenplay and does not appear in the film. All of this gives it a sense of up-to-the-minute immediacy, even viewed many years later. It's one of Lee's best films of that decade.

It's a lot like a play, with specific characters chosen for their specific conflicts, and heavily dialogue-based. But it's all so vibrant and urgent that it works. It begins in Los Angeles as a group of Black men board a bus bound for Washington D.C. and the march. The extremely committed performers are bookended by the wise Jeremiah (Ossie Davis) and the avuncular George (Charles S. Dutton). Andre Braugher is memorable as "Flip," a boastful, bigoted up-and-coming actor, as is Roger Guenveur Smith as the soft-spoken, light-skinned cop Gary.

Other characters are a gay couple, a recent convert to Islam, an ex-Marine, and a film student (whose "documentary" video footage we occasionally see). There's also a father who is handcuffed to his teen son due to some sort of barbaric court order. Richard Belzer appears as a white bus driver who abandons his Black passengers. Spending two hours with these men, their stories become more and more human, and the film finds a most poignant conclusion. Michael Jackson recorded a new song, "On the Line," for the film's opening credits.